The "Catbird Seat" is a story about a seemingly normal man whose dislike of a fellow employee strains him to a breaking point.
Mr. Martin is responsible for the filing department at the company F&S. Recently he has been worried that Mrs. Barrows, a newly hired advisor to the president, is after his department. The story is told from Martin’s perspective at first appears like Mrs. Barrows is causing him a lot of grief in his job. Often she stops by his office asking him silly
questions that have nothing to do with anything. They irritate him and he sees the nonsense as a way to purposely badger him. Then he learns from one of his assistants that the silly questions she asks are actually expressions Dodger announcers use. The assistant points out that Mrs Barrows
probably assumes since he has never made a comment on the absurdness of the questions that he is familiar with the sayings. Even though this explanation is completely rational and most likely Mr. Martin is not convinced. When Mrs. Barrows is hired and starts making changes to the company’s policies, Martin’s dislike of the woman intensifies.
Doing things right and perfect has always been important to Martin. And to Martin the traditional policies were already perfect and had no room for improvement. His problem with Miss Barrows become so extreme in his own distorted mind that he decides to murder her. He goes to her house, but once he arrives he comes to the realization that there is nothing to kill her with. This is probably more an act of conscience than really not being able to find a weapon. In the kitchen there are plenty of knives and other objects to chose from. Then he realizes that acting in a strange manner, something no one would believe, discredits Mrs. Barrows. This idea would work just as well as murdering her, probably even better. At the end of the story he achieves what he desired by getting rid of Mrs. Barrows, but at what cost? Now he has to live with knowing he attempted murder and planned out a delusional trial, neither, of which fits into the infallible way he has always tried to do his work and live his life